Showing results by author "M. J. Trow" in All Categories

Everybody, they say, has a book in them. Retired Chief Inspector Walter Dew certainly did. But, under the streets of London, something stirred. More than that, there was a muttering that grew to a grumbling, and the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling. Then out of the houses, the bodies came tumbling. Superintendent Sholto Lestrade, with Dew by his side and the rookies Bang and Olufsen in his wake, must go Below to face their demons, to find a murderer whose machinations will upset the infrastructure of the richest city on earth. Will any of them live to tell Dew’s tale? The tale of a rat.

The wings that retired Superintendent Lestrade comes on are those of a de Haviland Hercules. The archaeologist Howard Carter has made the discovery of the century in the Valley of the Kings, but all around him men are dying. Lord Carnarvon, careless with his razor, falls prey to a mosquito bite. Alain le Clerk leaves the tomb in a hurry to die alone in the desert. Aaron G String, the railway magnate, blows his brains out yards from the tomb's entrance.

Lestrade had never been arrested before, although he had often had his collar felt by unsuspecting constables. But now a woman has died in his arms in a London pea-souper, and he is not only arrested but facing the drop. Millicent Millichip, in the wrong place at the right time, is neither the first nor only in a series of murders by someone so cunning that all the brains of the Yard can’t catch them - and this despite the calling card left helpfully at every scene.

The madness begins when Captain Orange and his three nieces are killed in a carriage accident. The only clues? A tall man seen near the Captain's house, and a broken mirror found in the Captain's breast pocket. Next, Janet Calthorp of King's College, London, tumbles to her death as she makes her way to her lover's bedroom, the victim of a tripwire. The clue? A broken mirror found in said lover's boudoir.

Murder is afoot among the footmen of Britain's Royal Household: a servant girl, Amy Macpherson, has been brutally slaughtered. And so our hero, Sholto Lestrade of Scotland Yard, is once again on the trail of mystery. As he tries to untangle a villainous web of conspiracy, the superintendent must venture north to Scotland. His investigations take him from Balmoral Castle to the Isle of Skye to the North British Hotel, where he narrowly escapes an inferno in Room 13. The intrepid investigator contends with the most baffling clues he has yet encountered.

England in 1920 is a land fit for heroes. So why is one of those heroes found dead in a dingy London hotel? And why does his war record show that he has been missing for three years? The deceased is the fiancé of Inspector Lestrade's daughter, and she sets out to find his murderer. As always with Lestrade, one murder has a habit of leading to another. How can a woman killed in an air raid in 1917 be found with a bullet through her head three years later?

Lestrade’s detectives at Scotland Yard have promised him that 1910 is going to be a peaceful year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way. His daughter, Emma, brings him news of a tragic boating accident and he is soon up to his neck in a series of vicious murders. On top of all this, Lestrade is roped in to help with the coronation of George V and Inspector Walter Dew needs help with the disappearance of a certain Belle Crippen.